Forge the new Sun
by Sythe
Summary: There is no petite goddess in Byleth's head, only an endless fountain of ancient, forgotten knowledge and an unyielding urge to reforge this world. Magitech Blacksmith!Byleth. Not canon-compliant.


Disclaimer: I don't own stuff. I'm just having fun and exercising my writing muscle

Premise: There is no petite goddess in Byleth's head, only an endless fountain of ancient, forgotten knowledge and an unyielding urge to fix this world and forge a new future.

Because Sothis, for all that she is the mother of dragons and the progenitor power, is first and foremost a crafter and a teacher who uplifted ancient humans into the first magi tech civilization of the world and then healed a land torn by magical nukes back to what it once was. She has never once claimed to be a warrior goddess.

* * *

**Chapter 1: Kindling**

* * *

It starts first with a shield, sun-worn and edged in leather, its sturdy silver body lined with cracks and dents more numerous than Byleth can count. It is well loved and well used, and quite possibly older than her. It has accompanied her father in and out of far more battles, skirmishes and random bar brawls than she cares to remember.

The old war horse of a tool.

And then one day, it fails.

She remembers that day vividly. She sits on the steps of a tiny chapel in a tiny village in the ass end of nowhere, so out of the way it doesn't even have an attending priest, only a couple nuns to sweep its altar and care for the ever increasing orphans of war.

She is five and a half, too young to follow him into battle, but occasionally into bars and places of less repute. So she sits and waits and receives now and again lessons from the nuns.

He comes back, as he always does, his impossibly broad back haloed by a descending red sun. Lines of scarlet snake around his sword arm, and there in his side, a scarlet flower blooms brilliantly.

She remembers startling at the sight, at his pronounced limp and the way he looks at her, relief and exhaustion warring on his face. The company men around him twitter like a flock of chickens at the slaughter before rushing him into the chapel proper as the nuns circle him.

Byleth is left to the side along with some of her father's stuff, the shield included. It is cracked. There is a hole in the middle of it in the shape of a newborn star. Jagged, wicked edges that tell of its violent failing. She remembers fingering the edges and then unwittingly draws blood on one sharp spike as her unbeating heart seems to swell impossibly large for her yet tiny ribcage.

She thinks, imagines in her little head, how the fight must have gone. Her valiant, larger than life father against some faceless foe in feverish battle. A lance rushes from the dark and meets the wall of the shield, punching through in one violent motion and meeting the flesh and blood body of Jeralt Eisner.

She thinks of that scarlet flower blooming greedily in her father's side, growing larger and larger by the minute as he grows paler and paler. She thinks of that shadow that threatens to engulf his face and that dazed look in his eyes.

It is so close to his chest, she thinks. Another finger span and it might have hit something else.

She circles her arms around her knees, balling herself up as the cold comes in the wake of the last light of the sun, her hot breath drawing moist spots on her clenched fists. She has never cried in her life, never once throws a tantrum or other such expected activities from the regular toddler. It is an oddity that means father can never leave her alone with the many childcare houses in the villages they pass by. The children never take well to her, as if sensing she isn't quite like any of them.

But she feels that perhaps she may be on the verge of it now.

Despite the fact that all the children in the world think their parents invincible, immortal gods. Byleth, even at only five and a half, has seen enough still bodies being carted away in the aftermath of her father's jobs to know that even the legendary Blade Breaker would not rise from a lance to the heart.

She thinks then, of the void that will follow his death.

Her unbeating heart feels like a hole now, dark and abyssal, as she brings one hand to trace the shield once more. She hates how small and helpless she feels in the face of it all. As her father battles for his life, she sits here on the curb and waits uselessly.

"You fail," she whispers in accusation.

And then, as if in response to the dark despair of a young child, a star blooms in her mind, old and alien and bringing with it an answer to the helplessness that threatens to drown her. Ideas flood her head as she eyes the brittle silvers and torn up leathers.

Here, says the star, a layer of Argathium, facing outward, to bleed the enemy of his strength.

There, it points to the torn leather handle, laced with Mythril to imbue him with vitality.

And finally, it draws her gaze to the hole in the middle of the shield, bless him with your sigil of the flames, so all under heaven would cow before his might, and none but the most wicked of hearts would dare bare their fangs against him.

Byleth's tiny fingers shake as they touch the heart of the shield, her young mind shivering under the assault of a star. Ideas, alien and old and out of this world, a cascade of whispers susurussing in the back of her head. All of them promising her a way… no… ways… countless ways… to keep that void she imagined from ever happening, to make sure that father will always… always... come back to her.

She closes her hand around the torn handle and says finally.

"You will never fail again."

* * *

She sets about learning how to realize her ideas. It is not easy. Child of a famed mercenary captain or not, Byleth is still not yet six, and only the most suicidal among blacksmiths would allow her into his workshop let alone show her how to wield a hammer and navigate her way around a live forge.

But she persists.

She is very stubborn. Even father says so, and here is the man who cowed an entire company of grizzled, grimface men who live and die by the sword that a baby has a place in his mercenary company.

By her fifteenth attempt, the local blacksmith grows frustrated enough (and his feet grow sore enough from chasing her again and again and again out of his workshop, not to mention his quickly cooling, neglected forge) to humor her with proper conversation.

"For the love of the Goddess, what the hell do ye' want?!"

"I want to fix this," she brandishes the broken shield.

"Fine! Fine! It will cost ye' money ye' don't have. But seeing as me apprentice iz saying ya old man is that hot shot merc, I'll come shake the coins outta him later. Now gim here!" He steps into her face, one brown, scarred hand going towards her shield.

She jumps out of his reach in one quick motion, years of practice at running around her father's company paying dividends, before swinging her face around to look at the blacksmith defiantly.

"I want to fix this… by myself" The blacksmith eyes her incredulously.

"Ye' five, girl!"

"Five and a half," she parries. "And I'm bigger than that boy who runs errands for you."

"Ye' shorter than me hammer! How ya gonna swing it ta fix tha'?"

"I'll grow. I'll learn," she bites back with all the certainty only a five-years-old possesses.

The blacksmith's eyes are bulging from their sockets now, but Byleth only regards him with the same stone carved face that has battleworn men doubt themselves.

"I dun take on no apprentices for free"

"I don't want to be your apprentice. I only want you to teach me how to fix this, and... " She sticks one hand into her pocket and out comes a pouch. It is not big, but it is filled to bursting with coins. Her father's men haven't keep as close an eye on things when their leader is down for the count.

She waves the pouch in front of the blacksmith's face. His eyes follow the motion of her arm and his ears seem to be twitching at the clinking sounds.

"I just want to learn how to fix this," she says again, spearing him with her large, teal eyes. "For my dad. You understand that, right, mister blacksmith? And if you say nothing then no one has to know where I learn such a dangerous thing, least of all my father. You understand, don't you?"

There is a split moment of hesitation, the blacksmith probably thinking of where she got those coins, and then he must have decided that he doesn't care, because in the next motion, he takes the coin pouch in her hand, and with a huff, says.

"Ye get the flog if ye slack off, girl."

* * *

She doesn't learn to fix the shield from that blacksmith. Of course.

She's five and a half. Stubborn little bug or no, Byleth hasn't the muscle strength to lift the hammer, and her skin is still too tender to stand around the forge for long… yet.

Besides, that blacksmith may have been the party to come out of that deal far better. He is the blacksmith of a tiny village in the ass end of nowhere. He's more used to fixing up hoes and kitchen knives and his forge has seen more steel and pig irons than proper silvers and weapons of war. Had she given him that shield to fix, the man himself might have had trouble with the job, let alone teach a child how to do the deed herself.

Nevertheless, Byleth does come away with some knowledge. It's piddly at best, not at all worthy of the pouch full of silvers she handed off to that grizzled farmer's blacksmith, and all of it theory, the barebone of the workings inside a blacksmith's workshop. But it is a start.

Then three months pass, and her father is fully recovered. His company packs up, and they promptly leave.

It takes another month for the company to settle in for a time at the next village with a working smithy, and here, Byleth steals yet another coin pouch, hefts the broken silver shield, and once more, goes about bugging the local smiths.

By the fourth such village, her father sits her down for a talk.

"So you want to become a smith," he cuts right to the chase. Her father has never been one for meandering talk. He loves her, and goes to great lengths for her, but he doesn't coddle her with soft words. Perhaps he doesn't even know how.

"I don't want to be a smith," she answers.

"You have been stealing from the company's coffer," he raises an eyebrow. "And there's that broken shield. I've been wondering where it was."

"I wasn't stealing," she replies petulantly. "I was training your men to have better security. If a merc can't keep his coins…"

"...then he doesn't deserve those coins," Jeralt finishes her line with a sigh. It is him who taught her so. And while he doesn't like the fact that his baby girl has been stealing from her father, he likes the fact that his supposedly very well-trained men have been letting this girl run circles around them even less. His little girl's burgeoning kleptomania aside, maybe he really does need to whip their asses back into shape again. But that is neither here nor there at the moment.

"Byleth," he stresses and looks the squirming seven years old in the eye. "The fact is, you have been taking money from me, without my approval, to get local smiths to teach you their trade."

She pouts, not disputing him.

"If you want to become a smith, I know someone who is levels above the garden variety smiths you have been haranguing. And as for the tuition, it may take some big jobs but…"

She cuts him off there.

"I don't want to be a smith."

He blinks owlishly at her.

"Then why?"

She pouts, the way she sees some children do in the face of upset parents. Amazingly, it seems to stall even the vaunted Blade Breaker somewhat, but not enough. Finally, she surrenders her reason.

"I just… I want to protect you," she says softly, almost in shame. It's even true. The star in her head may guide her vision, but it is that dreadful void when she imagines a world without her father that fuels Byleth's fire.

"Oh," says Jeralt dumbly.

"But…" she continues. "I'm small… and I'm seven. And I've been training, but I don't think I can… I can…" She looks away, then down at the broken shield. She brings it to her lap, fingers the part where she has started and stopped her attempts. He has bought another shield in replacement. It is new and shiny and it does its job, but Byleth knows that the one she makes will be a world better. She knows it to her bones.

"But I can fix this. It's easy enough. And it will… it will protect you in my place" She looks back at him now, feeling a little braver, a little surer of her path, now that he's suddenly silent.

"I don't want to be a smith. I just want to do what I can to protect you."

And just like that, in the face of a child's determination, even the legendary Blade Breaker has to accept his defeat.

The fifth village they visit is not a village in the boonie but a proper smithtown, and it is here that they stay for the better part of the next two years.

As she turns nine, Byleth is finally tall enough to wield a hammer. It is just in time too, because the company has to leave for greener pastures. Bustling town or not, eventually work dries up for a mercenary company as efficient as Jeralt's. Soon, the bandits that they hunt at the behest of the townies learn to avoid the area, and the routes through which they escort the merchants are suddenly clear and safe as central empire highways.

They stay on the road for almost a year, going past the border into Empire territory where a new phase of political unrest spells abundant coins for the mercenaries. Apparently some local nobles have a problem with the reigning emperor and decide to argue their cases with fire, blood, and abundant soldiers. If what she hears from her father's men is correct, then the empress herself has scampered right off to Kingdom's territory in the chaos.

In between her sword training and magic lessons, Byleth starts to hone her practical skills. There is no shortage of things for her to practice on. A company of fighting men always have broken tools lying around that need fixing. The problem is the furnace, or in this case, the lack thereof.

Charcoal fire burns hot, but without a proper furnace, the heat wavers and the metal she produces from her makeshift road forge can only be charitably called pig iron. And while the company does visit towns and villages now and then, there is never enough time for her in between her sword training, managing the armory, and tending to the wounded men as part of her faith magic practice to visit the smithy proper.

She spends her her eleventh birthday in dejected frustration, sweeping the shattered pieces of her latest attempt into a pitiful heap. As she mulls her dilemma over and over in her head, her father comes into the tent. He takes one look at her face, then at the splintered piles lying in one corner before smiling wryly. It is not the first time he has seen the fruits of her failure, but it still stings nevertheless.

Thankfully, he says nothing, only sits down beside her on her cot.

"Happy birthday, kiddo" with motions far gentler than anyone would think he's capable of, the Blade Breaker slides a wrapped bundle into her lap. She unwraps it. It is a sword, castle steel, good quality, very serviceable in their line of work, which makes her umpteenth attempt at producing a meager iron dagger all the more insulting.

But it is a gift, nonetheless, and it comes from father. She would cherish it even if it were a toothpick.

"Chin up, little one," he rubs her on the head and messes up her hair. "You've been wearing that frown for far too long. Even the men are commenting on it."

She glances at him, questions in her eyes. It is then that her father's face turns solemn.

"You once said that you would not allow me to leave you in the villages anymore, that you would come with me even into battlefields. Do you feel the same now?"

Byleth sits up straight. Yes, that was her ninth birthday. When they left the smithtown and he asked her if she wanted to stay. He would be back, he said. It would be safer for her here than on the road with him. She would get to spend all her time at the knees of far superior smiths, learning the craft that she wanted to learn. She said no. She said she had had enough of waiting on doorsteps for him to return, had had enough of being left behind. She was big and tall now, she said, and she would come with him, into battles if needed be. And that was that.

"Yes," says Byleth, voice quiet but firm. "I would go with you anywhere, father."

He is silent for a minute.

"Very well. Then it is time for you to graduate from your training sword."

The day after her twelfth birthday, Byleth has her first taste of battle. It is chaotic and bloody, even under the wings of her father, nothing at all like tavern songs or tales of old. It smells of copper and piss, of men dying, of fire roaring as it dances across the land.

In the aftermath, her father holds her hand as she chases the shiver from her body.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

She wipes the vomit from her mouth and looks him in the eye.

"Like I would still go with you anywhere, father."

Her father rarely smiles, she thinks, but when he does he looks a lot younger than he actually is.

* * *

Fire forges steel. War forges humans. Some people break in the flames. Some harden. If they were in a more peaceful world, she sometimes thinks, perhaps there would be no need for people like her or her father. But they don't, and here they are, in a land filled with thieves and robbers to be dealt with and the brunt of noble rebellions borne mostly by the common folks. While dukes and counts are merely stripped of their ranks and their wealth, the common soldiers from the losing side have only one choice: run away from the guillotine of the empire and turn to banditry for a wretched living. In some villages, Jeralt's company is unwelcomed. But in many others, they are greeted with fanfare and relieved faces. It is better the swords that can be bought than the ones that cannot.

In this way, Byleth grows into her teen years. It is in the battlefield that the solution comes to her.

Fire forges steel.

She doesn't technically need a furnace to work her metals. She just needs a strong and stable flame, she thinks as she fires off a Bolganone from her hand. A red fissure opens up in the ground in front of her, spewing fire and heat that lights up an entire patch of the skies. She already has a strong and stable flame.

By the time she is fourteenth, Byleth has mastered a forging technique few smiths ever tried, for the simple reason that few smiths would have the opportunity to learn high level magic and fewer still could cast and wield a hammer at the same time. It is exhausting to keep up the spellwork on one hand for hours and work the metals with the other hand, but it's also good practice. Powerful magic often means victorious battles. Victorious battles mean fewer still bodies to be carted away in the aftermath. A strong fire kept continuously for hours on end is a fearsome weapon on the battlefield and a powerful tool when they are back in camp. If her father finds her forging methods odd, then he says nothing of it. And the men under him are only too grateful for the free repair service and the abundance of quality weapons to choose from.

That hurdle passed, Byleth quickly turns out masses of her first experiments. She makes the jump effortlessly from steel weapons to silver, her years of theoretical tutelage and practice upon practice paying dividends at last. Until finally, she sets upon the broken shield.

It's easy, she thinks as the sun sets one fine autumn day, sitting in camp by the road, the shield, now whole and cooling, lying on a beaten brass table in front of her. It's so easy, it's almost insulting.

It also doesn't look… or feel.. how she thinks it would. Her teaching from the blacksmith village has been clear on the matter. Five smithing stones to repair a silver weapon… except…

The star speaks in her mind, its voice drowning out the teaching of countless smiths that have tutored her.

A layer of Agarthium here, facing outward, to sap the strength of the enemies.

Lace the Mythril here, along the handle, to imbue him with vitality.

And here, in its heart, a blessing of the sigil of flames, to ward him from wicked minds and wicked hearts.

A shield fit for the saints.

It goes against everything she has been taught at the knees of blacksmiths.

"Hey! You did it, kiddo!" The shout breaks her from her thoughts. Her father's excited face comes into vision. He hovers above his old shield, his fingers tracing the exquisite mend she has done. It looks as if it has never broken.

"You fixed it!"

"No, I didn't," she says almost without thought, pauses for a minute, then continues. "I'm not done with it yet."

Her father blinks.

"What are you talking about?" He hefts it in one hand. "This is… this is as good as my current one."

"It can be better," she says curtly, one hand reaching to take the shield from her father. A shield fit for the saints, the phrase repeats in her mind. Knowing what it can be, the shield as it is is almost painful to look at.

"It failed you before and it will fail you again. You need something better than silver shields, father. And for that, I will need some Argathium and some Mythril."

Her father is flummoxed by her statement. He looks at her, bewildered.

"Little one, I might not know much about forging…" he means not at all. He breaks his weapons constantly. She should know. She's the one who manages their weapon finance and also the one who fixes all of his stuff. "... but don't those sound… I don't know… rare?"

Byleth frowns. Rare is a word she doesn't particularly care for. Rare means expensive. And expensive is hard to bear when one has to keep the numbers for over fifty fighting men who don't care to know their finances even if she writes the numbers on their favorite tavern wench's teats.

But in her head, the star insists. A shield fit for the saints. And it's not like she's considering making that shield for every single chump that he employs, just the man himself.

So Byleth steels herself and girdle her account books.

"I'm sure we'll find a deal in the market," she pronounces confidently. They are only a day away from Silver Maiden, and in a city that big, one is guaranteed to find anything one needs for a price.

* * *

Byleth finds no deals in Silver Maiden.

She stands in the metal market at the end of the Street of Steel, her father besides her. They are both eyeing the pieces of metal on display and then grimacing at the price tags below them. A nine followed by an outrageous number of zeroes.

"This is outrageous!" The Blade Breaker exclaims, voicing the exact thoughts in his daughter's head. "That much is barely enough for a hairclip! And you are selling it at that price?! This is daylight robbery! Have you no shame, man?!"

The clerk manning the supply depot rubs his hands together apologetically while nervously eyeing the intimidating frame of the Blade Breaker.

"Beg pardon, sir, but them's the price the market decides on."

"Well, what the hell happened to make the market decide on that many zeroes? Did you piss off your union and make all the miners go on strike? There's no way that price is normal! I can buy a beach house for myself and a harem for my daughter with that much money! What would you even use that little amount for?! Gilding the king's chamber potty?!"

"Well," the clerk coughs, hiding an awkward snigger. "You see.. Ahh.. there are no mines for Argathium and Mythril."

Jeralt stares at the man as if he's stupid. But Byleth starts besides him, suddenly recalling an old one eyed silversmith who might have said something along the line, that some rare metals could only be found in the guts of the most ferocious wild beasts. But at the time she had merely thought he was trying to pull one over the ridiculous little girl trying to learn a man's work. It can't be, can it?

It appears that it can, indeed, as in the very next moment, the clerk pulls out a detailed illustration from nowhere with buy-in rates readily attached.

"Argathium and Mythril can only be found in the guts of demonic beasts. As well as some other metals. Since they are rare, the knowledge is not wide spread. We at the depot put out supply requests every other moon, but you see… ever since that dreadful incident with the Duscur and whatnot with the king and the nobility, there ain't been many brave men and women taking up our supply requests."

The man must have meant suicidal men and women. Because there in the illustration are a giant desert crawler, a sand worm the size of a small castle, and below it, a giant wolf, which is the size of a windmill, and below that wolf, a giant bird, and then below that bird, a grotesque thing that might be an undead dog with more spikes than one cares to count, and below even that…

Suddenly, the previously outrageous price tags make perfect sense.

"Goddess," her father breaths in shock. "Ok, fine, man. I get it." Then he turns to her, face downcast. "Guess them's the rub, kid. I'm sorry, but it doesn't look like we are getting them fancy metals for you."

But Byleth, against his expectation, doesn't look the least bit disappointed.

"What are you feeling sorry for?" she says softly, and it is only because he is her father that Jeralt even detects that slight tremble of excitement in her voice. "That means… that if we kill these things," she points lovingly at the illustration of monstrous sandworms, monstrous wolves, monstrous bird, and monstrous demonic thing "Then these things," and now reverently to the slivers of fancy metals on the clerk's show table. "... are free."

"Oh," says Jeralt Eisner eloquently as he rethinks his own wisdom the day he decided to hand the bookkeeping over to his little daughter.

* * *

The giant desert crawler coils and springs from the shifting ground in an explosion of sand. The men scream. Her father curses and yells commands after commands. Bolganons and Cutting Gales rumble as the company's mages rain frantic fire and hailstorm upon the beast.

Byleth all but dances in the chaos, a smile slowly spreading on her usual placid face. From one hand, she fires off another Ragnarok, her other hand throws a Physics at a flailing company man who looks to be nearly missing a leg. The man starts crying for his mama as another company man drags him from the hissing beast.

If anyone cares to ask her, muses Byleth, then she would say that this is almost pleasant. The pay is good. The beast is strong but straightforward. She's getting a lot of practice out of this. And best of all, there is no fussy noble clientele to deal with. Then she thinks of the outrageous price tags at the depot market. On second thought, the best part is the pay, the amazingly, wondrously good pay, and the fact that there is no need to haggle with stingy penny pinchers nor worrying about being stiffed on collection. She is already fantasizing about the many tavern tabs her father has racked up over the years being paid off in full. Truly, what more could a mercenary girl ask for?

It's a shame nobody is asking her.

Her father gives a great yell right before pinioning the crawler with his steel lance, finally dazing it enough for the rest of his men to dogpile it with punches and kicks and the occasional sword stabs. Within the minute, the desert crawler is now ready to be desert shish kebab.

As the men set about butchering the massive sand worm, Byleth makes her round among the wounded, working her faith magic miracles on them. They look rough, she thinks, but no worse than a regular skirmish with a particularly tough gang of bandits backed up with castle forge ballistas. And still, they whine as if she has set Duscur mama bears on them.

"I almost lost a leg!" bemoans one archer.

"Shut it, Bob. You got off lucky! I almost became worm poop!" Shouts Steve the lancer from a makeshift cot three rows besides him. Then he turns to her father, who is just now wringing his soaked tunic with both hands. A massive torrent of sweat and blood (not his own) pours forth from the piece of cloth. Even he had a good workout, thinks Byleth happily.

"You better be appreciating this, captain! I almost became worm poop! For you!" Steve keeps up for hollering. For someone who claims to have almost made the trip through a sand crawler's digestive tract and coming out from the backend, he is awfully energetic. "When I signed up for this job, I thought I would be carrying off noble's riches and fair village maidens! Not become worm poop so you can get a fancy new shield!"

And since he has that much energy left, Byleth notes, perhaps he would be up to latrine duty as the other men take a break.

* * *

Finally, as the sun sets upon the camp, three thick bars of metal are laid out before her. Argathium, Mythril, and Umbral Steel. More than enough for her to finish the shield. She goes about setting up her road forge, putting on her thick smith's apron and gloves, laying out her tools. And then suddenly, she stops.

Staring wide eyed at the shield lying next to the bars of rare metal, she feels a profound sense of… wrongness. Her father must have noticed, because he comes to stand beside her. Looking curiously at the whole laid out ensemble and then at his daughter who is now doing a very good impression of a stone gargoyle, Jeralt asks.

"What's wrong?"

For all that he isn't the most socially acute man in the world, somehow, he always knows the things that bother her. She ponders his question.

What is wrong with this picture?

The fact that she's trying to work three different metals with vastly differing properties into the same item? She remembers the many smiths who showed her the ropes when she was much younger. Work with a pure metal, they always said. Don't try to be greedy. If you force metals together, you will only have a brittle end product. A mutt that has neither of its parent's strength. An iron sword is forged purely from iron, steel from pure steel, and silver from pure silver.

But then again, those same smiths have never forged with spellfire, nor do they have a star filling their head with glittering blueprints of things that seem out of this world. They also don't forge things with metals taken from the guts of giant demonic beasts either.

What else is wrong?

The fact that whenever she looks at pricy silver weapons other men would marvel at, she only sees cheap children's toys that are bound to break after a single use, that somewhere in her head is the idea that these tools are mute and blind and deaf and dumb and not what proper tools should be. But then what should proper tools be like? Oh that's easy. Says the voice in her head. Proper tools should sing and tremble and in her hands, proper tools can forge the very earth itself.

Well, that's wonderful, but that's not it either. She brings one hand up to rub at her chin. And then, it occurs to her. Looking at her muddied palm, she realizes with a start.

She is unclean.

Looking down, she sees her clothes, soiled with sweat and dirt and monster ichor. Her skin is balmy with sweat and dotted with road mud. Her smith's apron is torn and burned in alternative patches and by the smell of it, might have weathered some company men's vomit along the road. This, she thinks, this will hardly do for a proper forging.

"I need a bath," she announces to an astonished looking father.

"Won't you get dirty anyway?" He asks, drawing from memory the many times she came away from her forge looking black and sooty as if she had slept in the cinder all night.

"It's only proper. It's your shield," she replies. "It's special"

Jeralt opens his mouth as if to say something, and then clicks it shut as he thinks of when she started on this road, how it has taken her a full decade to arrive at this point. So he simply nods and says.

"Ok"

He brings her to a stream nearby and stood guard as she cleans herself thoroughly. Byleth is sixteen and flowering into the kind of woman that makes her old father anxious at the sea of men that inevitably gather around her. He knows she can take care of herself. He has seen to that. But he's still a father so he gets that special honor. And to be perfectly honest, if it is for the protection of Byleth, then Jeralt wouldn't mind going from Jeralt the Blade Breaker to Jeralt the Dick Breaker.

Before long, she emerges squeaky clean from the stream. She dresses herself from the one spare set of clean clothes she has. Simple white tunic and pants. Together they walk back to her forge, where a few company men have gathered to watch the spectacle unfold.

She takes up her apron and gloves and then stops. They are dirty, says the star. But they protect me, says she, from the flames. But it's your flame, why would it hurt you? It says right back.

Slowly, she lets go, and takes up the hammer in one hand. Her father watches with concern, but he doesn't stop her.

A Bolganon starts in her free hand, but the voice says once more. It won't do. You need a Ragnarok. So she lets the Bolganon fizzle out and builds up a Ragnarok. It is wild in her hand, lashing out, raging to set about the fields, as Ragnaroks are wont to do. But she reins it in, curls it into a tight ball of intense heat and flame in her hands. It is incredibly taxing. Ragnarok is no small feat to be thrown around willy nilly. It is a fire god tamed into a spell, and every time she calls upon it in battle, it demands its own tribute. But she can pay. She will pay.

At her back, she hears the company mages titter in shock and fear.

Don't hurt me, she says to the flame god in her hand. Don't burn me. And surprise, surprise, it doesn't. It licks her bare skin and hands like a dog would a master, but it doesn't burn her, doesn't hurt her.

The metals warp. The shield softens, bubbles. She raises the hammer as other questions come forth. How does she go about this? How will she mix the metals? No smiths have done this before. She's attempting the impossible.

Sing, says the star. You must sing to them.

Sing? She thinks incredulously. She knows of no proper songs, only bawdy tavern ditties. Is she to serenade about some sweet wench's round behind while hammering her father's shield. Granted, he might just enjoy it with his particular sense of humor.

Silly child, scoffs the star. And then suddenly, a trance sets upon her. Byleth's mouth opens on its own accord, and out comes a song she has never heard before.

"In time's flow, see the glow of flames ever burning bright…"

The words are old. So old it might have come from ancient church hymns. But no hymn she has ever heard sounds like it.

Her hammer hand falls and all at once the forging begins. The metal flows as if it is water, mixing between three different sources. Byleth is dimly aware of the growing crowd gathering around her and the susurussing of their awed whispers. Her mind is completely consumed by the process as she watches the impossible unfold before her eyes, centuries of blacksmith's wisdom shoved aside like so much useless shrapnel.

It is coming together, she thinks, and almost reaches for the tongs to shape the metals.

Those tools will break, says the star. You don't need them. Let the song shape this child. Breath life into her.

She stills and nods. Her song grows louder, and she grows more at ease. Her hammer rises and falls, spider cracks forming along its surface but it is holding, for now.

Hours pass as night descends in full. A lazy gold moon floats across the sky amongst a veil of starlight. Byleth is lost in the song and the rhythm of her hammer. The flame god eats and eats and she keeps feeding it. Her strength is waning but she thinks, just a bit more, we are so close.

And then finally as the first light of dawn peeks across a dark sky, it is done.

Or rather, it is almost done. Her hammer falls from her hand, shattered. The flame god dies. She is standing in front of the cooling shield, panting. Her clothes are drenched in sweat.

Bless her with your sigil, the star whispers in her ears.

She doesn't even ask how anymore, merely trusting its wisdom. Her right hand goes to her thigh where her dagger strap hangs and with a swift motion, withdraw the blade. She hears the commotion at her back, hears her father's alarmed voice among them. But it is the final step, and she will see it through.

She brings the blade across her left palm. It draws a brilliant red line that blooms into little flowers. The flowers fall into a sea of gleaming metal, sink. She watches as the shield seems to glow under the light of a new sun, watches as a crimson sigil draws itself across the surface and disappears in the blink of an eye. And then it cools, settles.

It is complete, she thinks dazedly. More than ten years ever since the star came alight in her mind with its promises, it is complete.

A shield fit for the saints.

She closes her eyes and falls.

* * *

**End Chapter 1**

* * *

_**Sythe**_


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